As we stood, waiting for the eventful moment, I heard someone behind call
out:
"Hi! look at your nose."
I could not turn round to see what was the matter, and whose nose it was
that was to be looked at. I stole a side-glance at George's nose! It
was all right - at all events, there was nothing wrong with it that could
be altered. I squinted down at my own, and that seemed all that could be
expected also.
"Look at your nose, you stupid ass!" came the same voice again, louder.
And then another voice cried:
"Push your nose out, can't you, you - you two with the dog!"
Neither George nor I dared to turn round. The man's hand was on the cap,
and the picture might be taken any moment. Was it us they were calling
to? What was the matter with our noses? Why were they to be pushed out!
But now the whole lock started yelling, and a stentorian voice from the
back shouted:
"Look at your boat, sir; you in the red and black caps. It's your two
corpses that will get taken in that photo, if you ain't quick."
We looked then, and saw that the nose of our boat had got fixed under the
woodwork of the lock, while the in-coming water was rising all around it,
and tilting it up. In another moment we should be over. Quick as
thought, we each seized an oar, and a vigorous blow against the side of
the lock with the butt-ends released the boat, and sent us sprawling on
our backs.
We did not come out well in that photograph, George and I. Of course, as
was to be expected, our luck ordained it, that the man should set his
wretched machine in motion at the precise moment that we were both lying
on our backs with a wild expression of "Where am I? and what is it?" on
our faces, and our four feet waving madly in the air.
Our feet were undoubtedly the leading article in that photograph.
Indeed, very little else was to be seen. They filled up the foreground
entirely. Behind them, you caught glimpses of the other boats, and bits
of the surrounding scenery; but everything and everybody else in the lock
looked so utterly insignificant and paltry compared with our feet, that
all the other people felt quite ashamed of themselves, and refused to
subscribe to the picture.
The owner of one steam launch, who had bespoke six copies, rescinded the
order on seeing the negative. He said he would take them if anybody
could show him his launch, but nobody could. It was somewhere behind
George's right foot.
There was a good deal of unpleasantness over the business. The
photographer thought we ought to take a dozen copies each, seeing that
the photo was about nine-tenths us, but we declined. We said we had no
objection to being photo'd full-length, but we preferred being taken the
right way up.
Wallingford, six miles above Streatley, is a very ancient town, and has
been an active centre for the making of English history. It was a rude,
mud-built town in the time of the Britons, who squatted there, until the
Roman legions evicted them; and replaced their clay-baked walls by mighty
fortifications, the trace of which Time has not yet succeeded in sweeping
away, so well those old-world masons knew how to build.
But Time, though he halted at Roman walls, soon crumbled Romans to dust;
and on the ground, in later years, fought savage Saxons and huge Danes,
until the Normans came.
It was a walled and fortified town up to the time of the Parliamentary
War, when it suffered a long and bitter siege from Fairfax. It fell at
last, and then the walls were razed.
From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of the river grows
more hilly, varied, and picturesque. Dorchester stands half a mile from
the river. It can be reached by paddling up the Thame, if you have a
small boat; but the best way is to leave the river at Day's Lock, and
take a walk across the fields. Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old
place, nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness.
Dorchester, like Wallingford, was a city in ancient British times; it was
then called Caer Doren, "the city on the water." In more recent times
the Romans formed a great camp here, the fortifications surrounding which
now seem like low, even hills. In Saxon days it was the capital of
Wessex. It is very old, and it was very strong and great once. Now it
sits aside from the stirring world, and nods and dreams.
Round Clifton Hampden, itself a wonderfully pretty village, old-
fashioned, peaceful, and dainty with flowers, the river scenery is rich
and beautiful. If you stay the night on land at Clifton, you cannot do
better than put up at the "Barley Mow." It is, without exception, I
should say, the quaintest, most old-world inn up the river. It stands on
the right of the bridge, quite away from the village. Its low-pitched
gables and thatched roof and latticed windows give it quite a story-book
appearance, while inside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied.
It would not be a good place for the heroine of a modern novel to stay
at. The heroine of a modern novel is always "divinely tall," and she is
ever "drawing herself up to her full height." At the "Barley Mow" she
would bump her head against the ceiling each time she did this.
